r/AHatInTime

I’ve beaten Sekiro, I’ve done the Pantheon of Hallownest in Hollow Knight, I’ve 100%ed Celeste on Steam and played some more difficult modded levels, and Death Wish is genuinely up there. That’s not to say it isn’t fun, though.

Some standouts:

- Zero Jumps is handily my favorite candle; completing Train Rush without jumping was a great time, and the freeform nature of the challenge made me ask which Time Pieces might be possible without jumping. I tried Bluefin Tunnel and the Mafia of Cooks rift only to be stopped short at the end of both, but abusing the movement mechanics was so fun that I didn’t really care.

- 10 Seconds Until Self-Destruct is pretty short, but insanely difficult to do hitless without the Time Stop Hat. Sometimes the lava pillars combined with the egg projectiles created a little too much visual noise to reasonably see every threat, but I greatly enjoyed this mission.

- Wound-Up Windmill and Bird Sanctuary are some of the most creative spins on their base levels in all of Death Wish. Even though Bird Sanctuary got a little frustrating because of the Pompous Crows and Wound-Up Windmill for its sheer length with One-Hit Hero equipped, both of these levels were really fun to map out and find skips or safer methods for.

- Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’ is by far the most difficult Death Wish for me; maybe it’s just my brain not handling multitasking and spontaneous routing decisions on the fly very well, because even having memorized every part of the ship, this one was an absolute slog and easily the most stressful mission of any of these, specifically for the “complete 40 tasks without missing one” objective. Completing 70 was kind of a breeze after that, though.

- Boss Rush was only ever annoying because of the “don’t miss any chance to hit” stipulation. While this is laughably easy for every other boss, Mustache Girl’s vulnerability periods are a little less clear and some of her attacks can be buggy in ways that lose you the whole attempt, forcing you to redo four fights that are probably tedious to the player at that point in the game. A good appetizer for the Seal the Deal contract though.

- All of the revamped boss fights are so well done without really feeling unfair: Mafia Boss EX is the least ridiculous of them (though his “mega charge” was very difficult to dodge the first few times); the directors are a shockingly well done 2v1 that had me looking for opportunities to attack both in quick succession (and I loved the “attack only one of them” objective for how intentionally you had to play); Mustache Girl EX is definitely the hardest and some hits felt borderline impossible to avoid, but I enjoyed its fast pace and precise movement required; and both versions of Snatcher EX amount to being my single favorite 3D platformer boss fight. The “use only blue potions” objective seems to make the fight way too tedious, but forcing you to dodge his attacks for so long really hammers in the patterns, forced me to learn to jump toward the geysers as they erupted and use the potions strategically to cancel his attacks; all of this made the slightly harder version in Seal the Deal incredibly fun and manageable in such a high-stakes setting. 10/10.

Granted, I still haven’t tried the final boss rush yet, but having gotten every stamp on every other mission, I can pretty safely say that Cruisin’ for a Bruisin’ asks way more of you than anything else in the whole mode. I could at least find a consistent route for the Deep Sea Rift Collapse, I could find skips for Wound-Up Windmill, and killing all the Mafia in Bird Sanctuary isn’t long enough of a task to become very frustrating. Maybe my brain just isn’t wired for the amount of multitasking and spontaneous routing that the ship requires, but the bonus stamps on that mission are the only ones that feel almost unattainable 💀

Why is that?